Beckoning Fates, page 21
I would have to do this by myself. I had to calculate this well. If I were to use a large fire spell right now and fail, we could all suffocate in here. Water? Ice? There were too few water elemental mana particles in this cave to release anything strong enough to drill a hole through the mountain of rock. The formerly ice-filled cave was now dry and arid, a thick layer of smoke coming from the burnt snarler corpses.
That left me with wind and earth, or a mixture of both, but I wasn’t confident in being able to produce a powerful enough spell. I thought about using phase two, but with the condition Tess was in right now, I had to stay conscious, at least until we got out of this dungeon.
Was there really no other option? As my mind scrambled for possible solutions, I saw Professor Glory take a fierce blow to her right arm, increasing the pressure that weighed on me.
‘I’m almost there, Papa! Hold on!’
Sylvie’s voice gave me an idea. That’s it!
“Curtis! I need your help right now!” I roared across the battlefield.
“Arthur, I don’t think I can afford to—”
“Come, now!” I barked back before he could argue.
Curtis was a bloody, grimy mess, but the wounds on his body all seemed shallow, so I didn’t think most of the blood was from him.
“What is it?” He was panting heavily, clearly exhausted. His shield was badly dented and his sword was slick with blood, dulled from repeated use.
“Do you think your World Howl is strong enough to clear the rubble?”
He shook his head hopelessly. “Arthur, I don’t think I have enough mana to even go into my first phase.”
“Just answer the question. Is it strong enough?”
“Yeah—if I had enough mana, I could potentially produce a blast bigger than the one where you, um, got injured.” He looked confused by where I was going with this.
I briefly considered telling him to direct the blast at the queen snarler, but even if it were strong enough to kill it, it would be impossible to pinpoint only the queen and not Professor Glory. It was safer to just go with my first plan.
“Okay. Don’t question what I’m about to do. Just focus on going into your first phase and producing a blast strong enough to clear that mountain of rubble. Got it?” The urgency and authority in my voice must have gotten through to Curtis because he just nodded and turned around.
I took off my seal and put it in my dimension ring, making sure to control the amount of fluctuation in the mana so as not to tip anyone off. Everyone was occupied with the snarlers, but if I didn’t control the mana release—like Professor Glory had done when she released her seal—I would draw attention from the queen snarler.
Feeling the untapped pool of mana I now had access to, I placed both my hands on Curtis’s back.
I willed mana into Curtis, and the prince involuntarily dropped to one knee before he was able to adjust his body to the sudden bombardment of energy.
Mana transference had been studied for many years, according to my professors and several of the books in the library, but they declared it a hopeless cause. They believed that a mage who had the fire-attribute should be able to receive mana from another fire-attribute mage, but after countless tests and failures, they deemed it implausible. The reason given was that even if someone was specialized, the mana inside their bodies wasn’t exclusively of that particular element. Hypothetically, if someone was able to condense and refine their core to the highest possible level, they could transfer mana with another person whose core was of the same element and at the same level. Other than that, it would be impossible.
Except for me.
The fact that I was able to manipulate all four elements allowed me to mimic the types of mana and the ratio of each element of the person I was transferring to. It was sort of like what I had done for my sister and Lilia when teaching them mana manipulation, but on a much larger scale. Of course, I hadn’t perfectly mastered this, so it was inevitable that I’d be wasting a lot of mana, but this was our best bet.
I began transmitting to Curtis, carefully controlling and limiting the amount of each elemental mana particle. Meanwhile I gritted my teeth in anger at myself.
There were so many small signs I had chosen to ignore, thinking it would work out fine, that I could handle it. Was I taking this life for granted? Being fortunate enough to have this amount of power at my age had definitely made me lose some of the sense of rationality I’d had in my former life.
No longer a king, no longer tied down by rules and politics as well as my own physical capabilities, I’d become careless. In this world, my potential was boundless. Reaching white stage or even further wasn’t a dream, but simply a matter of time and effort.
What appalled me the most—and what I hated to admit—was that I was, in a sense, a bit like Lucas. I was nowhere near as much of a jerk as him and I actually cared for people other than myself, but I was becoming arrogant—arrogant to the extent of carelessness.
“I don’t know what you just did, Arthur, but I feel great. I think I’ll be able to go into my first phase,” the prince exclaimed, bringing me back to reality. I sensed the change in his body as he began to transition into his first phase.
Mana fluctuated erratically around him as he released his beast will. I jerked my hands back in pain as Curtis released his first phase. Confused, I tried transferring mana to him again, but the rejection from his body was even stronger this time.
Was the mana from his beast will rejecting my mana?
Before I had the chance to try again, Curtis began gathering mana for his World Howl technique.
He crouched, lowering his center of gravity to withstand the recoil of the spell, mana from both his body and the atmosphere gathering in front of his open jaw.
Meanwhile, I rushed over to Tess, who was curled up behind the front line, and scooped her up. Getting her out of here was my first priority. I was partly to blame for this mess. I should’ve done a better job of preventing anything like this from happening in the first place.
With a beastly roar, Curtis unleashed his powerful breath attack, but the mutated queen must have sensed that something was wrong. It immediately abandoned the wounded Professor Glory and shifted its attention to Curtis.
“Oh no you don’t!” Professor Glory roared, leaping up and grabbing the mutated queen in flight to prevent it from reaching Curtis.
With a thundering explosion, Curtis’s spell blasted a large hole through the rubble, clearing a path to the now-visible stairway entrance back to the surface.
“Everyone, head to the stairs!” I roared above the sound of rocks falling and snarlers growling.
“Go now!” Professor Glory shouted as well, as she struggled to hold her own against the queen snarler.
The exhausted class made one final push toward the entrance while Professor Glory held the queen at bay, the wall of snarler corpses obstructing the live ones for a brief moment.
“Claire, I’m trusting Tess to you.” I handed Tess to Claire, who seemed to be in the best shape right now.
“You’re not planning on staying, are you? You can’t be serious. As your commanding officer on the disciplinary committee, I forbid—”
“Just go.” We had a limited amount of time, so I released a sharp killing intent to get my point across, making her flinch backward in surprise.
Helping the drained Curtis back to his feet, I pushed both of my disciplinary committee teammates toward the front entrance of the cave, then turned back to where Professor Glory was fighting.
“Why the hell did you come back, Arthur?” she snapped at me through gritted teeth, her frustration almost palpable.
“It’s going to take both of us to kill this thing.” Drawing Dawn’s Ballad from my dimension ring again, I unsheathed it.
“Listen to your superiors when they give you an order,” she responded, blocking a blow from the queen’s sharp claws.
“Hey, I’m a professor too, remember?” I said, lunging in under the sweeping claws to strike at the beast’s exposed side.
“We’ll finish this discussion after we’ve made it through this,” she said.
The situation didn’t look too good—the mana transference had used up most of my mana. If it weren’t for mana rotation, I probably would’ve felt the backlash already.
I glanced toward the entry to see if the other students had gotten out safely. The only one left was Lucas. Our eyes locked for a brief moment before he turned away and disappeared into the entrance.
I could’ve sworn I saw him snort before he left.
We continued battling the queen, and I managed to sever one of its wings. It wasn’t capable of flight any longer, but its thick fur was preventing us from doing anything more than giving it shallow wounds. This mutated queen, standing over ten feet tall on its hind legs, was covered with wounds from Professor Glory and me, but that didn’t seem to bother it at all.
“I don’t think we can kill this thing!” I shouted to Professor Glory, who was on the other side of the queen snarler.
“We’ll need to at least bind it somehow so we can escape. I don’t think it’ll follow us out of the dungeon,” she responded as the queen howled in anger.
“I need you to keep it busy for five seconds,” I said, repositioning myself so Professor Glory was in view.
“Okay.” She didn’t question what I was about to do, just unleashed another burst of mana from her core.
As Professor Glory leaped toward the mutated queen, I put the sheath back into my dimension ring and grasped my sword with both hands. I used the last of my mana to will lightning into Dawn’s Ballad.
Without mana to empower my movement, my dash toward the queen snarler felt like a crawl.
“Move!” At my signal, Professor Glory leaped out of the way as I stabbed my sword into a wound I had managed to inflict earlier, just above its hip.
There was a crackling sound as electricity arced in through the shallow cut, and the queen erupted into a high-pitched shriek as she began to spasm.
“Let’s go!” I wasn’t even able to withdraw my sword from the queen snarler’s body before Professor Glory had grabbed me by my waist and began carrying me toward the front entrance. I struggled to pull Dawn’s Ballad free, but it was futile—it slipped from my grasp as Professor Glory pulled me to safety.
There were hordes of minions in our way, but Professor Glory slashed through until we reached the front entrance.
Just then, we saw movement—a shadow against the wall. Professor Glory could only gasp as we looked behind us. The queen, my sword still embedded in its hip, had somehow recovered enough to make one desperate leap to keep us from escaping.
“Move!” I shouted from my perch, dangling over my professor’s shoulder. The professor lunged forward, and we barely managed to avoid those sharp claws before we landed hard on the ground.
We didn’t have the luxury of looking back. We scrambled past the minions and into the hall. Finally I risked a glance over my shoulder and spotted the mutated queen crawling its way toward us. I guess my last attack had done some damage because it wasn’t freely mobile—instead, it limped awkwardly toward us, using its claws to drag its body. There was something else, something odd about the queen snarler…
It was able to scrabble through the rubble and began heaving itself up the stairs behind us. I had an unsettled feeling in my guts, like I needed to get as far away as possible. As it drew closer and closer to the top of the staircase, following us, its face and body began pulsating. Tumors began growing sporadically on random parts of its body and face.
Don’t tell me…
Before I was even able to finish my thought, the queen burst apart in an explosion of guts, blood, and shards of exoskeleton.
The force of the explosion opened a large hole in the ground where the queen had stood. It also pushed Professor Glory forward before she could turn to look, and she lost her grip on me.
“Arthur!” she cried desperately as she reached her hand out for me, but it was too late. I could feel myself growing weaker with every heartbeat.
“Save Tess!” I called back, then used the last bit of mana I had to augment my body.
67
Widow’s Crypt IV
As I tumbled through the hole, I spread my arms and legs, desperately trying to find anything to grab to stop myself from becoming a splatter mark on the ground. The rubble falling around me kept me from stabilizing myself, but finally my right hand latched onto a tree root jutting out into the opening. Unfortunately, that was also the arm that had been dislocated during the battle, so the sudden jolt sent a sharp pain up my arm and made me wish I’d just fallen flat on the ground instead.
I was dangling helplessly by my right arm, which felt as if it were going to rip off at any moment. I couldn’t see anything at all; the gap through which I’d fallen was choked with dust and dark as night. Gathering my wits, I reached up to grasp the root with my left arm to relieve some of the pain, while I desperately sent Sylvie a mental transmission.
Sylv. Are you there? I fell quite a ways, but I’m still okay. Do you sense where I am?
I waited for a minute but there was no response—I couldn’t even sense my bond. I began worrying that something had happened to her, but with the queen snarler dead and the rest trapped inside the dungeon, it was unlikely. It was more reasonable to conclude that either I was too far down, or that this area was warded off and sealed from the outside—or more accurately, the surface.
Given the extent of my drop, I doubted I was on any of the floors immediately below, making me wonder if the explosion had unveiled a hidden passage to some room somewhere inside the dungeon.
I thought back to the explosion caused by the mutated queen snarler. It was strange—the blast was large, but I got the feeling that the explosion hadn’t been meant to kill whoever was near it. If that were the case, Professor Glory and I would be in a much worse state.
Gritting my teeth, I resisted the temptation to just let go and leave my fate up to the gods of this world.
After a quick assessment of my body—which was in fairly good shape other than my right shoulder—I tried to survey my surroundings, but I couldn’t see a thing. It wasn’t simply dark; it was pitch black. That feeling when you shut your eyes so hard that it seemed like different lights were oozing around in your vision or the sensation that no matter how hard you squinted, your eyes couldn’t adjust—that was what I was experiencing.
As I activated my mana rotation, I redirected the mana I had covering my body to only my left arm. I had to use this “break time” to gather as much mana I could. I augmented what little mana I had into my eyes in hopes of seeing something, but I was rewarded with only darkness.
I’m not blind… am I? I augmented my eyes again.
Just to ease my anxiety, I broke one of the most basic rules in a situation like this—I produced a small fire on the tip of my right index finger.
Looking at the warm red and orange flicker of fire on my fingertip, I breathed a sigh of relief, then extinguished the flame.
While vision was important, the last thing I wanted to do in a dark place like this was draw attention to myself. Now that any enemies here knew my location, I needed to move.
Since I couldn’t see, I used wind to sense the type of space I was in. I had no idea how narrow or wide this hole was, but I assumed it wasn’t too wide since I had hit quite a few objects along the way while falling.
Sending out short, soft bursts of wind around me, I calculated that this shaft, for a lack of a better word, had a diameter of about thirty feet. I couldn’t sense how far down I was, though, or how much further I had to go before I had a floor to walk on.
I had to decide whether to try and climb back up or make my way down. Considering all the debris that had fallen down along with me, it was safe to assume that there would be an opening at the top, but with no response from Sylvie and with Professor Glory and the rest of the class in no condition to mount an immediate rescue attempt, I only had one option: going down.
I sighed.
No matter how rational and levelheaded I was, I couldn’t help feeling anxious in this situation. I couldn’t see anything or even sense any life forms, which made me more edgy than when I could see the danger in front of me. When the army of snarlers had been trying to rip us apart, I’d known what I had to do and had been able to think how to deal with it. Right now, I could neither predict nor imagine what might happen in the next couple of seconds, making me all the more tense.
Augmenting both hands with earth-attribute mana, I was able to bury my hand into the wall of the abyss to create a handhold. I positioned myself flat against the side, both hands dug into the wall to keep myself from falling.
With a steady motion, I pulled my augmented hands out of the wall and allowed myself to fall a short distance, then clawed my hands into the wall again to stop. The stress it put on my arms made me cringe every time, but I knew this would be the fastest way down.
Grip, let go; grip, let go; grip, let go.
I had to keep my body flat so I didn’t start falling away from the wall. I also couldn’t wait too long before gripping the wall again; it would be difficult to try and slow down if I let myself pick up too much speed.
I let out pulses of wind every now and then to gauge how much farther I had to go down. But even after some three hours of gripping and letting go, according to my internal clock, I had yet to sense a floor anywhere even close beneath me.
How deep is this fucking hole? Without the luxury of venting my frustration aloud, I was left to rant inside my head, using words even the most vulgar of adults would find inappropriate.
Everyone warned adventurers about the dangers and unpredictability of dungeons, and so far those warnings were proving to be true. This supposedly low-level dungeon had caused me more trouble than the all times I had adventured with Jasmine without using magic. Then there had been the Dire Tombs…
